Hiawatha’s Photographing (opening)
Lewis Carroll
From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
Find this poem online at My Poetic Side
The universe is a circle whose circumference is nowhere
and whose centre is everywhere.
Paraphrase of Blaise Pascal
Once more unto this month’s collection of quotes.
Nudity is only taboo because we make it so. Let’s normalise it and break free from societal norms.
[unknown]
The only time of learning is from age nine to sixteen; afterwards, Cupid begins to tyrannise, jealousies, marriage and worldly cares intertwine with studies. It is a mistake to keep boys at their books at an age more proper for matrimony, when their minds chiefly run on propagating their race. Nature will be nature at 18+. At this age their information is like writing on greasy parchment: it will not stick or leave an imprint. Trying to educate boys over eighteen is like painting anew on an old picture: the colours will not be imbibed.
[John Aubrey, quoted un Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life]
I’m at that age where my mind still thinks I’m 29, my humour suggests I’m 12, while my body mostly keeps asking if I’m sure I’m not dead yet.
[unknown]
Since Einstein the future of time has become even more precarious.
[Prof. Janna Levin]
There is no objective time – past, present and future are all a matter of your own perspective.
[Dr Kate Mack]
Calories (noun): Tiny creatures that inhabit your closet and sew your clothes a little bit tighter every night.
[unknown]
I feel like a lot of my problems would be solved if I had a dragon.
[unknown]
The truth has no defence against a fool determined to believe a lie.
[Mark Twain]
Don’t call it getting undressed. Call it returning to factory settings.
[unknown]
Every time you open a book and read, a tree smiles, knowing there’s life after death.
[unknown]
Though many desire these treasures, none enter but he who knows the key and how to use it.
[Anthony Powell; Temporary Kings]
Reason is given to all men, but all men do not know how to use it. Liberty is offered to each one of us, but few learn to be free. Such gifts are, in any case, a right to be earned, not a privilege for the shiftless.
[Anthony Powell; The Kindly Ones]
We’re trained in obedience and rule-following from a very young age. We need equivalent practice in breaking rules, in recognizing when a rule or law is unjust and needs to be broken, and in acting in accord with that recognition. We need this all the time, but damn if we don’t need it especially now. One day, possibly soon, we will be called on to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Be ready.
[Mandy Brown]
There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.
[Audre Lorde]
Macavity: the Mystery Cat (extract)
TS Elliot
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
[…]
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square –
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
Find this poem online at Gutenberg Project
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.
Jef Mallett
And so it came to pass that we reached the appointed date for the delivery of this month’s (fairly short) collection of quotes.
I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answer. I hold no secret knowledge, as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive – nor will we deserve to.
[Leonard Peltier]
Our world is not divided by race, colour, gender or religion. Our world is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, colour, gender or religion.
[Nelson Mandela]
The natural sole purpose of beauty is to admire it.
[John Ruskin]
Having a calm and compassionate mind enables us to use our natural intelligence more effectively.
[Dalai Lama]
It’s absurd that common sense has become so uncommon.
Sleep at night.
Eat real foods (enough to offset your energy needs).
Don’t starve yourself.
Move your body, sometimes hard.
Don’t drink too much.
Don’t smoke or vape.
Connect with other people, in person.
Spend time outdoors.
[Brad Stulberg]
Personally I have never been to a lap dancing club and have no intention of going, but it annoys me intensely that Councils seem to see it as their divine right to stick their noses into such things.
If there are men who are silly enough to want to waste all their money in such places and women who are happy to earn quite substantial money by jiggling their lady bits at a bunch of drunken half-wits, then where is the harm?
I know, objectifies women blah, blah, blah, promotes an unhealthy view of women amongst men blah, blah, blah, but that’s just nonsense.
Our entire society objectifies women, so it’s a bit hard to just pick on these clubs, and these chaps have probably always had an emotionally stunted outlook, and the clubs are unlikely to change that much.
[Rudi Gunn; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/21/lap-dancing-clubs-human-rights]
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.
[Marcel Proust]
Ariel’s Song From The Tempest (Act 5, Scene 1)
William Shakespeare
Where the bee sucks there suck I:
In a cowslips bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Find this poem online at Shakespeare Network
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately
be explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Here be this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes; and it is bumper offering this month.
In crisis communication, a well-known formula is: outrage x hazard. So even if the hazard is low, if concern is great, you’d better be speaking with clarity, acknowledging uncertainty, listening to the questions, concerns, and confusion, and bringing people along for the ride.
[Katelyn Jetelina, @yourlocalepidemiologist]
President Trump seems to have an unsatiable need to be the centre of attention. International relations are a serious matter; they concern people’s lives and the stability of entire regions. At times, it feels as though the whole world is being forced to take part in a multibillion-dollar therapy session to compensate for the attention he may not have received in childhood.
[Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iranian Vice President for Strategic Affairs]
To meet a person you are going to marry requires filtering through a lot of people … If you socialise much less, it takes you much longer to find a match if you find one at all … If you spend lots of time socialising with your peers in the real world, your standards [for a potential partner] are anchored in the real world. If you spend your time on Instagram, your standards are anchored to an artificial sense of what is normal.
[Lyman Stone]
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.
[Christopher Hitchens]
The Seven Social Sins are:
* Wealth without work.
* Pleasure without conscience.
* Knowledge without character.
* Commerce without morality.
* Science without humanity.
* Worship without sacrifice.
* Politics without principle.
[Frederick Lewis Donaldson]
As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants did spring;
Every thing did banish moan …
[William Shakespeare; “Sonnet to sundry notes of music” from The Passionate Pilgrim (1598)]
And God said “love your enemy”, and I obeyed him and loved myself.
[Khalil Gibran]
Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping.
[Hubert Reeves, Canadian-French astrophysicist]
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
[Eleanor Roosevelt]
The aesthetic evaluation of women before their intellectual evaluation is not a modern phenomenon. It is not an internet glitch. It is not something Andrew Tate invented between supercar videos. It is one of the oldest organising principles in human civilisation.
[Clare Macnaughton]
And the female aesthetic appreciation of the male. Indeed I suggest this is the bedrock of of sexual selection in all species.
Clothes hide the body, but nudity reveals the woman’s soul.
[Christian Dior]
A woman’s body has the beauty of nature. For her, undressing is like the sun dissipating the clouds.
[Auguste Rodin]
Adult life boils dawn to four simple things: Everything is expensive. I don’t know what to eat. I’m tired. Ibuprofen.
[unknown]
Every tiny creature is carrying a life that matters deeply to itself. The bee searching for water, the bird hiding from storms, the frog resting in cool grass. They are not background decoration. They are living souls trying to survive beside us.
[unknown]
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control … Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
[Albert Einstein]
My daughter, then just shy of five … collapsed our entire chain of species inheritance into a single anthropomorphic figure that she called “my monkey grandma”.
[Stephen Phelan, Guardian, 2 June 2026]
The longer I live, the more convinced I am that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.
[unknown]
All in June
WH Davies
A week ago I had a fire
To warm my feet, my hands and face;
Cold winds, that never make a friend,
Crept in and out of every place.
Today the fields are rich in grass,
And buttercups in thousands grow;
I’ll show the world where I have been–
With gold-dust seen on either shoe.
Till to my garden back I come,
Where bumble-bees for hours and hours
Sit on their soft, fat, velvet bums,
To wriggle out of hollow flowers.
Find this poem online at Poetry Soup